Background
Our client is a well-established beverages manufacturing and distribution company selling water and soft drinks. They are the market leader in water and have lately faced strong competition which requires them to review their products portfolio and drive innovation to maintain their strong market share position.
They have an experienced and solid supply chain and sales organization who manage their core products very well as they have reached the right scale and have been able to optimize their operation. However, they have limited experience in managing new product launches and the resulting complexities and risks.
The client was looking for support in defining and implementing the right work
processes to manage new product launches in order to deliver the expected growth.
Problem Being Solved
Our team was tasked to assess the current new product launches organization and processes, recommend the right structure and ways of working and support in the implementation of the agreed process.
The process should address the following key points:
• How do we generate and select/filter innovation ideas?
• How do we manage innovation projects to increase chances of successful launches?
• How do we measure innovation performance?
The Outcome
A MEAP partner project lead was assigned to the project for a 3-month period working on site and remotely. The project was divided into three phases, 1) Assessment and recommendation, 2) Process development and stake-holders alignment and 3) Training, Implementation& monitoring.
A comprehensive assessment was performed in partnership with the client's team and
recommendations shared and aligned with key stake-holders. A team was assigned to work with the MEAP partner to define the work processes and develop the required templates, and tools. Outcomes were shared across functions for final alignment before implementation. The process was piloted on a live project and adjustments made as needed before final roll out.
The process is currently being used by the client as part of their day-to-day business processes with minimum support from MEAP. The MEAP team is engaged as needed for specific support as part of the monitoring phase.
The pilot project was launched earlier than expected and in market performance is exceeding expectations. Innovation pipeline is being built by the assigned team and performance being tracked using the newly implemented process.
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